1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid crystal display, and more particularly, to a liquid crystal display having an increased domain width while having increased response speed and transmittance.
2. Description of the Related Art
A liquid crystal display (LCD) is one of the most widely used flat panel displays. An LCD includes a thin film transistor substrate provided with pixel electrodes and a common electrode substrate provided with a common electrode and a liquid crystal (LC) layer interposed therebetween. The LCD displays images by applying voltages to the pixel electrodes and the common electrode to generate an electrical field in the LC layer, which determines orientations of LC molecules in the LC layer to adjust transmittance of light.
A vertical alignment (VA) mode LCD aligns LC molecules such that the long axes of the LC molecules are perpendicular to the substrates in the absence of an electrical field, resulting in a high contrast ratio and wide reference viewing angle.
The wide viewing angle of the VA mode LCD can be realized by cutouts in the electrical field-generating electrodes and protrusions on the electrical field-generating electrodes. Since the cutouts and the protrusions can determine the tilt directions of the LC molecules, the tilt directions can be distributed into several directions by using the cutouts and the protrusions such that the reference viewing angle is widened.
As described above, in VA mode liquid crystal displays, pixel electrodes are divided into a plurality of domains by forming cutouts or protrusions to realize a wide viewing angle. In this case, liquid crystal molecules near the cutouts or the protrusions are rapidly tilted, whereas liquid crystal molecules away from the cutouts or the protrusions are slowly tilted, thereby resulting in a reduction in response speed. Furthermore, as the number of domains of one pixel increases, transmittance decreases. Conversely, as the number of domains of one pixel decreases, transmittance increases but a domain width, increases, which makes it difficult to effectively control liquid crystal molecules and thus makes the alignment direction of the liquid crystal molecules unstable, thereby resulting in textures, ultimately resulting in a reduction of brightness.